storytelling, infographics Jason Ramasami storytelling, infographics Jason Ramasami

The Big Picture published

Since creating the Big Picture mural I wanted to have something that was more portable and shareable. I had the idea of making a gatefold leaflet with some explanatory notes on the reverse like so:

My original design notes.

My original design notes.

10 Publishing have now printed this leaflet. This purpose of this is to have something handy that gives a sense of the overarching Bible storyline.

If you have used it and found it useful please leave a positive review on the site.

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A quick glance into my sketchnote/scribing process

I thought it would be worth sharing an example of how I produce sketchnotes/scribe material.

I thought it would be fun to share my scribing process. Thanks to the guys at Scriberia I took a look at this excellent Ted Talk by Shawn Achor:

They recommended a two hour timescale so I watched the video through and made these notes in my sketchbook:

Then I picked up Procreate on my iPad and organised my initial thoughts into something more accessible. Here is a timelapse of the process:

For me the process is often more interesting than the finished result. I hope you find it useful having a look at the image develop. Procreate is very useful for capturing this kind of thing.

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“I like what I am seeing - could it be useful for my organisation?”

Consider some of the following possibilities as ways that scribing might benefit you:

  • live events - processing spontaneous and unexpected material 

  • repurposing existing content for greater usefulness

  • summarising key ideas in distinctive ways

  • grasping and making underlying connections explicit

  • aiding the retention of key messages when it most counts

For more information have a look at my dedicated scribing page.

Get in touch if you have any questions.

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infographics Jason Ramasami infographics Jason Ramasami

The Lost Box Film & Infographic

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18 months ago a friend of mine mentioned that he was working on a school space project with some ambitious and talented Year 11 students. The principal idea was that they were sending a weather balloon up into the stratosphere with a bunch of devices that would capture data and beam it back down.

I had the opportunity to capture the amazing story in a couple of short films. Here is a YouTube playlist that brings together all of the clips.

My ongoing fascination with creating infographic material led me to begin constructing a diagram that summarises/commemorates the journey of the first Lost Box.

Roughs

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Biro on a notebook. Some quick thoughts summarising my general approach. Remember tat I had spent a lot of time absorbing the material at this stage, so I wasn’t coming ‘cold’ to the event.

Provisional Mock-Ups: exploded diagram and characters

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This image was a combination of biro on paper, clip studio paint and some rudimentary colouring. I labelled all of the parts and used it to enquire with Pete Clarke (the lead teacher on the project) what each item was.

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I began playing about with some humorous renditions of the main figures involved. One of the 16 year old students is quite literally like a Wookie, so this was particularly satisfying.

Exploded Diagram 2

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This time I took the material into Affinity Designer - my favourite vector app ever, complete with the ability to bring hand-drawn strokes. I love that app.

The Flight Path - some early messing about

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The main benefit of making mistakes is that you can clear the way to something far better - this early attempt at combining dates with the flight of the box has a few issues with it that became immediately obvious on producing the image.

Exploded Box further annotations

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You can see where this was going.


Data-crunching the old fashioned way

I asked the team to produce some detailed (and date-specific) notes on the stages. I think it was interesting reflective exercise for them to undertake. I then processed these into a shorter version that would translate well into a poster format.

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Here is my first attempt to try and understand how it might look graphically spread out across a page. I think this was the first time I properly understood what had been going on all that time with my mate Pete.

I then produced this outline with the possible idea of illustrating each of the dates. I particularly liked the bit where Vella and the 360 camera go skiing together but this was dumped later on because the overall poster was in danger of losing it’s focus.

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Scale of ascent - solving it visually


The problems identified with the early diagram led me to do some extra homework and thinking about how to picture the ascent in a way that was simple to grasp. What was meaningful to the audience? How could you communicate this journey?

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First Proper Compositions


For the first time I felt I could bring all the different elements together. It takes a while to understand complicated bits of information and how they link up - I now had the confidence to create an all0in-one summary. The project was beginning to fly.

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After sleeping on it, I adjusted the shape of the diagram to reflect the height of the ascent. I like that this rough was done in red biro.

Timeline - first vectors

And so I began the long slow shuffle between biro scribbles and actual legible text/image in vector format. Everything was shifting as I knitted the bits together.

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A more detailed composition

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A step closer

This is a screenshot from Clip Studio Paint - I am taking a vector timeline (see above) and mashing it up in a bitmap format. CSP is my favourite drafting app - I just like the pencils set up I use. I can work quickly with it and move things around in ways that feel natural to my thought process.

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Inking (AKA vectoring!) the final version

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This is my favourite stage - most of the underlying thinking has been done and so I can listen to some music while enjoying drawing carefully. I could spend days in this state. Affinity Designer I love you (although I should add that it is essential to have it on both Mac and iPad because organising thousands of vector layers can be a royal pain on a tablet).

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This page was generated using my previously posted process shots on this page.

POSTCRIPT

Just a week before the end of term we received news that the project had been given a finalist place in the Big Bang fair in March. This event is very well attended, so I am delighted to say that both the film(s) and infographic will get the opportunity to reach lots of people with this inspirational tale.

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October led me back into Instagram

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So I felt the need to get back into the daily/regular discipline of drawing things and posting them online after a bit of a break. Maybe it’s related to being in a stressful day job? Maybe something else?

Hopefully it won’t look like this.

Hopefully it won’t look like this.


Anyways, so I decided to get back into something regular and have found a nice little rhythm developing including some new ideas emerging.

Some of the usual notes on my process:

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Scanner Pro - pops up nicely in the top right corner when you go to edit any photos in iOS. I like it’s simple ability to bleach stuff.

Scanner Pro - pops up nicely in the top right corner when you go to edit any photos in iOS. I like it’s simple ability to bleach stuff.

I like these results - they are useful for taking things to the next level.

I like these results - they are useful for taking things to the next level.

  • scribbles in my square tiger-purchased blank sketchbook that I also happen to use as my daily teacher planner. I use an orange bic biro. I love the nib on it. Even with a decent iPad Pro knocking about, this is by far the best way to get my thoughts out quickly.

  • I take a photo with my iPad camera and then I process the imagery in Scanner Pro (unfortunately the track record for Prizmo has recently gone down the toilet so I gave it a shove - Scanner Pro has almost the same functionality).

  • this gets dragged into Procreate where I have set up some templates for Instagram/Twitter-friendly image creation. Essentially I produce a square image with four smaller squares. This gets posted to Instagram and my twitter feed gets the first image.

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  • I use my own smooth brush with bobbly bits for line work and a non-smoothing brush for grey colouring.

  • the great thing to come out of this (so far) is that the use of a four panel structure forces me to create three or four distinct ‘beats’ which takes a bit of pressure off. One or two of the posts so far use a single larger box, but that’s because I am just messing about (and seriously who cares).

Palindromes

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Playing about usually gets other things going. I was chatting to my son recently about Palindromes and then did a bit of research online. I was amazed how many there are and how complex! I noted a bunch down and have so far illustrated ten with an eye on keeping it up in my spare time. I like how you can take a really weird sentence and create some bizarre mini-narrative out of it. I posted them here.

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